Bajwa nails 'govt's lie' in high court

Countering the Punjab government's stand in the high court that village houses were not numbered, the state Congress president has pointed out the evidence of it in the delimitation notification in six blocks of Fatehgarh Sahib district.

Alleging that the state government had delimited wards the illegal way before the panchayat elections, the Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee (PPCC) had moved the Punjab and Haryana high court. In his reply filed in the high court on Tuesday, PPCC president Partap Singh Bajwa has submitted that the ward-bandi (delimitation) notification issued by the Fatehgarh Sahib deputy commissioner on January 31 nails the government's lie that houses in the gram sabha were not allotted particular numbers.

Bajwa has quoted examples from the ward-bandi notification for Khera, Bassi Pathana, Sirhind, Amloh and Khamanon blocks of Fatehgarh Sahib district. He has submitted that the ward-bandi notifications in no other district mention house numbers.

S Karuna Raju, director of rural development and panchayats, had submitted an affidavit in the high court that house numbers were not mentioned in villages even for the sake of implementing development and welfare schemes and taking grants to the beneficiaries.

Appearing for the PPCC, senior lawyer Anupam Gupta argued that the state government had committed fraud by mentioning house numbers on the latest electoral rolls. House numbers could be mentioned only in urban areas, he submitted. The hearing is on Thursday.